Probe of BPE: Senate ‘ll not succumb to blackmail – Mark

ABUJA – SENATE President, David Mark, said yesterday that the Senate was too big to target an individual in its attempt to carry out an investigation. He also warned that those who had questions to answer must not cry wolf.

Speaking while inaugurating Senate Panel on Adhoc Committee on Privatization of some government companies, Mark, who urged members of the committee to be honest, courageous and transparent in carrying out the task of finding out what went wrong with the failed companies, stressed that it was unfortunate that some people were already insinuating that the probe was designed to get at some persons, adding that the Senate would not succumb to blackmail.

He said: “Obviously, the public is not very happy with what has happened to public companies. Not all of them, some have succeeded, we also look at those that have succeeded so that we can learn lesson from the ones that have succeeded and apply it on the ones that have not succeeded.

“But it is disheartening and totally unacceptable whereby individuals of purported companies or who have bought companies would cannibalise them and remove the parts and send them out of this country.

“Those are totally unacceptable and there are issues like that. But truly, nobody is going to be a target of this exercise. The assignment, to me, is very simple but also a very sensitive one and if you have been reading papers recently, there are already insinuations and allusions already as to why the Senate is even doing this at all.”